dance-maker

Hip Hop 2000

In these weird times, I want to offer something I've been keeping to myself: Lots and lots of Aaliyah choreography. Also, let's go across the floor to TLC.

For me, 90’s and 2000’s hip hop is the best dance music. It reached me in white suburbia and made me feel the most myself in my body. And it got me asking questions about America like WTF?

Can I lead a class that deeply enjoys Luda and is also conscious of the history of commodification of black dance culture? I'm gunna try.

My scholarly work has examined African diaspora vernacular dances from a anthropological/sociological viewpoint. I embodied what I studied. I travelled a lot and bashfully fell in love with so many dance forms that I still carry in my body, without a level of expertise. I struggle with the wonderful paradox of Hip-Hop, and many folk forms: there is no central authority to control, therefore it's ever mutating and surviving AND it's also hard to hold it's history and give ownership to it's creators and writers.

The pop/radio hip-hop music I grew up on is important to me, shaped how I move, helped me to see the world. And some of it's also entertainment complex fodder. And the 90's is already 'old-school' so I have something older saved in my body.

So I'm teaching a class: Sat July 2 at Chi Mac in South Phily. 12:30-2:30.